Last year, Houston saw a 16 percent drop in domestic violence reports from Hispanics. The police blame Texas’ anti-sanctuary city law, saying it has made undocumented immigrants more reluctant to report crime for fear of being deported.Published OnJune 3, 2018CreditCreditIsabel Castro for The New York Times

By Cora Engelbrecht

June 3, 2018

HOUSTON — For years, she slept with a gun under her pillow, living in fear of a boyfriend who beat her, controlled her life and threatened to kill her and her children. Domenica, who came to this country illegally from Mexico in 1995 and became part of the booming immigrant community in Houston, said her partner was a United States citizen, and often reminded her that she could be deported if she went to the police.

“He told me nobody would help me, because I don’t have papers,” said Domenica, 38, who has a son and daughter with her boyfriend, and asked that her last name not be used in order to protect them. “I was with him like that for a pretty long time. I felt like there was no help for me.”

In August of last year, fearing for the safety of her children, Domenica decided to flee. She never called the police. She said she would rather go into hiding than appear in court and risk being separated from her children, or sent home to Mexico.

“That scene is happening all the time,” Houston’s police chief, Art Acevedo, said in an interview. Though Houston’s immigrant population is one of the fastest-growing in the country, the city last year saw a 16 percent drop in domestic violence reports from the Hispanic community — a decline that the police blame on a tough new immigration enforcement law in Texas and the increasingly hostile political climate across the country surrounding the issue of illegal immigration.

The Houston police recorded 6,273 domestic violence reports from Hispanics in 2017, compared with 7,460 the year before.

Police departments in several cities with large Hispanic populations, including Los Angeles, Denver and San Diego, also experienced a decline in reports of domestic violence and sexual assault in their Hispanic communities. In Houston, Latino domestic violence reports went down even as the city’s Hispanic community, now 44 percent of the population, grew significantly.

“Undocumented immigrants and even lawful immigrants are afraid to report crime,” said Chief Acevedo, who has spoken publicly about the need for local leaders to care for immigrants under increased pressure from state and federal authorities. “They’re seeing the headlines from across the country, where immigration agents are showing up at courthouses, trying to deport people.”

One case drew national headlines in February 2017, when an undocumented transgender woman from Mexico went to a courthouse in El Paso County, Tex., to file a protective order against her ex-boyfriend. She was detained on the spot by federal agents.

In interviews across Houston, women’s activists, domestic violence shelter workers and immigrants shared detailed stories of women who had become more fearful than ever of any contact with the authorities, tying those fears to the threat of deportation.

One 38-year-old woman said she had never called the police about her husband, who frequently beat her, not even when she was six months pregnant and he punched her in the stomach, causing her to lose the baby. Eventually, when her husband threatened to kill her, she left him — but she did not report him. “I know the police are there to help,” said the woman, who feared she would be identified and deported if she gave her name. “But with the laws now, a lot of women like me are too afraid to come forward.”

Across the country, authorities have documented declines in crime reporting by immigrants. Though a general reluctance to contact authorities has always been a problem for police departments dealing with immigrant communities, the police say that many of the steepest declines began early in 2017, when President Trump took office and ordered federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement to step up its targeting of those in the country illegally.

Removal orders are up over all from 2016, and much more broadly applied than they were during the last two years of the Obama administration. Arrests of immigrants who appear in court have also increased.

A survey of hundreds of police officers, victims’ advocates and prosecutors across all 50 states, released by the American Civil Liberties Union in May, found numerous reports that undocumented immigrants are now more reluctant to call the police, press criminal charges and testify against assailants. A total of 82 percent of the prosecutors surveyed said that domestic abuse cases have become harder to prosecute.

In Harris County, which includes Houston, the number of immigrants transferred from county jails to federal agents enforcing immigration orders jumped 60 percent in the first five months of 2017, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based immigration think tank.

In September, the Texas Legislature approved a sweeping law that orders local police departments to comply with requests by federal authorities to turn over local detainees suspected of being in the country illegally. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, declared the measure was necessary in order to prevent municipalities from setting up so-called “sanctuary cities.”

Under the new Texas law, known as Senate Bill 4, local officials could face jail time and fines that exceed $25,000 for refusing to honor federal “detainer” requests.

Houston has joined Dallas, Austin and other Texas cities with large Hispanic populations in a lawsuit to overturn the law, arguing that S.B. 4 could lead to widespread racial profiling.

Mr. Abbott has characterized critics’ concerns as “fear mongering,” and said that the law does not pose problems for noncriminals. “If you’re a criminal and you’ve done something wrong, yes, whether you’re here legally or illegally, you’ve got something to be concerned about,” he said during a Univision television interview last spring. “If not, you’ve got nothing to be concerned about.”

A federal appeals court largely upheld the measure in April, but is currently weighing a request by the cities for a rehearing.

Meanwhile, the political storm surrounding the Texas immigration debate has driven some of the state’s more vulnerable immigrants further into the shadows. This is especially troubling for the Houston Police Department, which recorded 43 domestic violence homicides among all ethnic groups last year.

City officials said they needed the entire community’s help in identifying potential perpetrators.

“Legislation like this doesn’t help at all. It just makes our job harder,” said Jason Cisneroz, a community service officer who is conducting outreach to make Hispanics feel comfortable reporting crimes. “It’s not just the decrease in calls for service, it’s also the decrease in willingness to be a part of an investigation.”

He requires his officers to file a report on every case in which they report on immigration status to federal authorities. Since the law went into effect, his officers have asked only four people to disclose their immigration status.

“We’re not interested in somebody’s immigration status,” Chief Acevedo said at a news conference in March, when he announced a new policy that requires supervisors to be present at all domestic violence crime scenes to help determine if an arrest should be made. “If a person is a victim of a crime or a witness to a crime, we want them to understand that this department, this D.A., our mayor, our community, stands with victims and witnesses of crime.”

Despite the drop in reports to the police, victims are finding workarounds. The Houston Area Women’s Center, which received 33,692 calls to its domestic violence hotline last year, saw an increase in Hispanic women seeking help.

Hotline counselors at the center inform callers of their legal rights and encourage them to disclose their immigration status, so that they can be advised on applying for special legal protections that may be available.

Victims of sexual assault and domestic violence can be granted permission to stay in the United States under what is known as a U visa, perhaps permanently, if they assist the police in their investigation. But a statutory cap of 10,000 such visas per year has resulted in a logjam: Last year, 33,500 assault victims applied for U visas — more than three times the number available.

Many women, like Domenica, are convinced that it is still too risky to come forward.

“I sleep better, knowing my children are safe,” Domenica said. She is living in a shelter outside Houston, but can only stay there temporarily.

The problem of where she will go next is a source of constant anxiety, but her fear of coming forward is worse. “I am still afraid of the courts,” she said.

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated the year that the Houston police recorded 6,273 domestic violence reports from Hispanics. It was 2017, not 2016.

Isabel Castro contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Fewer Hispanics Report Domestic Abuse. Police Fault Deportations.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe